[whiddershins]

I talked to a retired Doctor about this the other day and he dismissed out of hand the narrative that doctors were fooled by pharma reps.

His read on this was: doctors by and large knew exactly what they were doing.

Perhaps they were irresponsible. Perhaps they just didn’t want to let people be in pain.

But his take was that laying this on the pharma reps is a silly idea.

[projektfu]

He would say that. Nobody likes to feel like a dupe, and there’s safety in numbers. I doubt he had a Purdue rep in his office change his mind about prescribing habits.

Still, you go to conferences and there are often a few Gladwell-caliber speakers at the big ones who get your head bobbing up and down for an hour. It’s very much in the drug companies’ interest to convince those speakers. Then the whole thing feels very organic, everyone’s new opinion feels like a reasoned medical choice.